Sunak at 10

Anthony Seldon’s latest retrospective weighs in at a hefty 560 pages, somewhat contradicting the impression he conveys that Rishi Sunak was a reluctant, lightweight but worthy Prime Minister facing an impossible task. In contrast to his three immediate predecessors, Sunak appears well equipped with many of the required skills and aptitudes, but inexperience and a lack of preparation were exposed from his earliest days in office. The book asks us to consider whether he would have been more successful had he more decisively repudiated the follies of Truss and Johnson, but of course, he felt he had to try to keep the warring factions of his Party together. Hence the ill-fated deal with Braverman and his lurch to the right by abandoning net zero targets and tethering himself to an implausibly-precise commitment to ‘stop the boats’! On the plus side he is rightly praised for the Windsor Framework and his initiatives on AI. But his unfortunate and lasting image – in the pouring rain in Downing Street - reflected someone overwhelmed by the elements, and no more able to relate a convincing narrative than the Premier who followed him. Although this volume is probably 100+ pages too long, it is a fair, balanced and ultimately generous portrait of a man who just managed to avoid outstaying his welcome.